Taxpayer group wants city to lower taxes, spending

Medicine Hat, AB – A new local taxpayer group is seeking members to influence city council to lower municipal spending and taxes.

Medicine Hat Rate Payers Society founder Alan Rose says the group is open to any citizen who shares the aim.

“We’d like to do it in a non-adversarial role. We don’t want to go back in history and blame people for mistakes of the past,” said Rose at his Great West Home and Leisure show booth. “We do want the city to allow us to come in and help consult and look at future spending so we can make sure that in this period of austerity, that we’re having must haves not nice to haves.”

One of the issues Rose says he would like the group to look at is management of the city’s energy and utilities division.

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“We want to find out what is happening with the utilities and how much are we exposed because that has the biggest liability,” said Rose.

He said that exposure comes by way of abandonment costs for oil and gas wells with the city not able to shift its costs to the Orphan Well Fund as its not able to go bankrupt.

“We’d have to get a more detailed look as to what is going on and see if we can get private information that we can share and hopefully understand what direction they are heading,” said Rose.

Rose said the group is aligned with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and will be hosting a meet and greet with the national organization on Nov. 21 at the Days Off Pub.

“They are going to share with people how they can help us and what we can expect,” said Rose of the event.